About Forrester
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Martin serves eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals. His focus is on the eCommerce market within the European Union, with a particular interest in the retail industry, covering both pure-play online and multichannel retailing. His current areas of research include the application of location- and context-aware mobile applications to the shopping experience; social commerce; the integration of interactive media such as video into the eCommerce mix; and physical/digital channel integration.
Martin's background spans both business and IT roles. He joined Forrester from the retail industry, having worked at Boots, a major European health and beauty retailer, for a number of years. His role there was to establish and develop a business-aligned enterprise architecture function, delivering transformational strategies for a number of key retail areas, including boots.com, the Advantage Card loyalty scheme, and the retail and pharmacy store systems. Prior to that, he worked in a variety of roles at Egg.com, Europe's largest pure-play digital bank, ranging from mergers and acquisitions to new product development for both Egg and PruDirect.
Martin holds a first degree in manufacturing engineering and operations management from Nottingham University and a Master of Philosophy from Newcastle University by research covering the simulation of commercial systems.
I’ve been called upon to present on agile commerce many times over the last year, and when I do I most commonly start with this quote: "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the...
Mobile commerce is a HOT topic! Over the last three months I’ve presented at 4 different European events on the subject of Mobile Commerce in retail, and in every other speech I’m...
You’ve all heard the term “Omnichannel.” And since you are reading this blog I’m going to assume you’ve also all heard the term “Agile Commerce.” If not,...
The May 26th UK deadline for compliance to the EU ePrivacy Directive has come and gone. The result? Confusion among eBusiness executives. Some action. Some sites are informing us of what...
I’ve been thinking, talking to clients, and reading a lot recently about the rise of the Chief Digital Officer. Most of my recent research has been concerning the shift we are seeing in leading...
Chief Digital Officer (or CDO) is the latest in a long line of snazzy C-level titles to emerge over the last few years. At Forrester we’ve been watching this trend for a while now and have made...
There are a few firms that I regularly point to as agile commerce exemplars, and one of them is Burberry. This always makes me smile because being from the north of England and growing up in a...
It’s no great surprise that many retailers are reporting an increase in multi-touchpoint engagement from their shoppers this year in the run-up to Christmas. Our own Technographics® data...
I've written about the European Union's grand plans for eCommerce in the past. Much of what the European Commission wants to achieve is laudable and would be fantastic to see. After all, who...
European online retail sales will reach €191 billion by 2017, up from €112 billion in 2012 – reflecting a 11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. ...
2013 is going to be a fascinating year for retail in Europe. When I look at what’s to come this year, I can paint a picture of what Forrester predicts by looking at a tale of two brands. Both...
I had the pleasure of presenting an evolution of our Agile Commerce research last week at the Internet Retailing conference in London. It was an interesting event on a number of fronts, but my key...
Here at Forrester, we’ve been evangelizing the concept of agile commerce for a while now, and we are working on a stream of research building on the concept and digging into exactly how...
The following picture might be a little harsh... ...but I’ve spoken to a number of eBusiness executives in luxury retail companies over the last 12 months or so, and by and large they share a...
Mao Zedong is quoted as having said that: “A revolution is not a dinner party . . . A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” However,...